BOOTLEG REVIEW: Water or Gold (Hollie Smith, 2016)

[This review was published in 2016]

As the long summer comes to a close, homegrown soul queen Hollie Smith returns with a real barn burner of an album. While there are a few low key ballads, the emphasis here is considerably more energetic and confident. 

The title track kicks things off in great style, with a funky distorted riff that recalls the psychedelic soul of the early seventies. ‘Lady Dee’ and ‘Holding On’ are built in the same style, blending a modern pop sensibility with a healthy dose of analogue swing.

‘Lead the Way’ has a great fuzzy guitar, horn section and organ. It’s an old-fashioned soul stomper that would not have looked place on an early 70s Stax LP. 

‘Poor On Poor’ continues the hard rocking approach into more a political direction, with Smith lamenting the infighting among the 99 per cent while the rich continue to profit at their expense.

The second half of the album sees Smith dip into more experimental, electronic waters.

‘Older Younger’ and ‘Make Believe’ sound like she has been listening to a lot of Robert Glasper. Indeed, ‘Make Believe’, with its processed backing vocals, samples and keyboards, could have come from Glasper’s Black Radio.

Overall, Water or Gold is a terrific showcase for one of New Zealand’s best voices. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: The Colour in Anything (James Blake, 2016)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

While it benefits from a more expansive sound, James Blake’s third album is cut from the same cloth as its predecessors.

From the opening wail of ‘Radio Silence’, Blake is on familiar territory, both sonically and thematically. 

It’s by no means bad. Blake is a talent musician and is in great voice throughout. 

‘I Hope My Life’ sounds like anti-dance music, building on a sinister groove while Blake ominously repeats ‘I hope I’m right’.

Majestic and otherworldly, ‘Waves Know Shores’ backs Blake’s mournful vocal with a horn section — it’s truly terrific. 

‘Love Me In Whatever Way’ features some great piano and, in an inspired choice, features sounds of traffic on a rain-drenched road. It’s in moments like this that Blake really shines.

While it is all well-produced, it just feels like he’s stuck in the same melancholic furrow. And at 17 tracks, it just feels bloated and repetitive.

It’s a good record for fans, but don’t be surprised if Album No. 4 turns out to be a change in direction, because on this evidence Blake needs to freshen things up a bit.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Iris (Albert Maysles, 2014)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

The final film from famous documentarian Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens, Salesman, Gimme Shelter), Iris is a warm, intimate portrait of Iris Opfal, the famous interior decorator and fashion designer.

Iris offers a wonderfully uplifting view of the world -- dismissing traditional notions of taste and beauty, Iris is a testament to staying true to who you are. In her case, such a strong combination of self-worth and personal style has meant adulation and praise from a variety of different designers and artists. 

The decorator for a variety of famous institutions (including commissions for the White House), Iris’s story is fascinating — and her influence, as this documentary demonstrates, goes far beyond clothes. 93 at the time of filming, she is a sharp, funny centre to the madness which is her life. Demonstrating a wonderful level of self-awareness, Iris is such a captivating presence you wish the film was longer.

At 77 minutes, Iris feels both tight as a drum and remarkably expansive. Even if you  have no interest in clothes or interior design, Iris is as much fun as its subject, and packs far more substance than one would expect.

As an epitaph for the late, great Maysles, and as a portrait of an iconic outsider, Iris is worth a look.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Life of Pablo (Kanye West, 2016)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

Following a hilariously staggered release earlier this year, Kanye West’s new album has finally arrived. Well, kind of. According to his label, West wants to keep working on the tracks so this review may end up feeling a little out of date.

This reviewer is not the biggest Kanye fan, but you have to tip your hat to the man's talent.

At 19 tracks, Life of Pablo is way too long. It is extremely ambitious and not that worried about hit singles, with West overlaying samples, vocal snippets and the various talents of a host of collaborators (including Kendrick Lamar, Rhianna, El DeBarge and The Weeknd) into the mix.

It’s a heady dreamlike mix. Mostly.

West’s desire to avoid falling into traditional pop rhythms results in a series of sudden, abrupt shifts in tone and style —  sometimes within songs — which force the listener to constantly pay attention.

'No More Parties In LA' is an easy highlight. Combining a couple of old-school soul samples, it is the best example of West’s maximalist aesthetic. Aside from that song, it’s hard to pick out individual tracks as standouts. This album works best if listened to in its entirety. Tracks that stand out include ’Ultralight Beam’, which is a strong opening, while ‘Famous’ is a digression into more paranoid Taylor Swift bashing.

All in all, while there are some lulls, Life of Pablo proves that, while his personal life may be a tired collection of celebrity cliches, as a musical talent West remains as restless and ambitious as ever. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: ‘Vinyl’ OST (2016)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

Movie and TV soundtracks are hard to pull off — the ethos generally being to encapsulate the film’s tone and (hopefully) get a few hit singles out of it. This formula is even harder to pull off when the film is a period piece. Set in 1973, and based in the world of music, Vinyl presents an opportunity to offer a more diverse range of musical flavours. Overall, it is a solid sound byte of the times. We get some deep(ish) cuts from the likes of the Edgar Winter Group (‘Frankenstein’), and a refreshing variety of styles (Soul, rock, Glam) of the era. We even get a dash of pre-punk in ‘Rotten Apple’ (sung by Mick Jagger’s son James) and a couple tracks from the New York Dolls’s David Johansen. 

It’s a nice selection that immediately sets you in a specific time and place, although a few of the choices might offend purists (the versions of ‘Personality Crisis’ and ‘Stranded in the Jungle’ are not the originals). If you are not that invested in the minutiae, there is a nice selection here. Any compilation that includes Otis Redding’s ‘Mr. Pitiful’ is doing something right.

Overall, Vinyl’s OST is pretty strong, and so it acts as a decent gateway into a variety of genres. Its  producers deserve credit for not falling back on the expected hits — this is not a ‘Cliff Notes’-style compilation, so we don’t get ‘Mississippi Queen’, ‘Horse with No Name’ or ‘Get It On (Bang A Gong)’ (insert your own choices here). None of the tracks could be considered well known, so there is an excitement to this compilation that most time capsule soundtracks do not achieve.

A solid listen.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Good Karma (Roxette, 2016)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

Most well known internationally for their 1988 LP Look Sharp!, Swedish pop duo Roxette have managed the rare trick most eighties acts couldn’t: longevity.

‘Why Dontcha?’ is a solid, bouncy opener. It uses real instruments and has an organic bounce missing from the rest of the album.

The rest of the album reads like a greatest hits of electro-pop cliches. The title track is an old-school power ballad. It’s more synth-driven, and sounds like a Euro-pop song from the late nineties. ‘This One’ has a theme that is oddly reminiscent of the theme to Dr. Who. It has the same sense of building momentum as the iconic tune, which is no bad thing. Weird echo aside, it is a catchy tune. ’20 BPM’ is the most danceable track on the track list, but is pretty indistinguishable with an other electro-dance number from the last decade. That description goes for most of the rest of the tracks.

Aside from the opener, the only standout track is ‘You Can’t Do This To Me’ -- it has a memorable chorus and melody, which immediately makes it stick out. It is easily the best song on the album.

In the end, Good Karma is a solid slice of Euro-pop but lacks that little dash of eccentricity to make it really stand out. In its favour no song lasts more than three and a half minutes, and all the songs are cut from the same cloth of vaguely affirmative hokum. It’s not bad, but it might be a little too cookie cutter for all tastes.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Mavis! (Jessica Edwards, 2015)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

A wonderful portrait of one of America’s most enduring and underrated voices, Mavis! tells the story of Mavis Staples and her family band, the Staple Singers.

Clocking in at a neat 77 minutes, Mavis! manages to span the singer’s 60-odd year career without ever feeling like a highlight reel.

Intercutting Mavis and a cavalcade of famous talking heads (Jeff Tweedy! Bob Dylan! Al Bell!) with footage from her illustrious past (singing in churches; meeting Martin Luther King jr; working at Stax Records in the 70s and collaborating with Prince in the 80s), this documentary is a great entry point for non-fans. 

There is plenty of humour to the story (Mavis confessing that she made out with Dylan), but the biggest thing to take away from Mavis! is its big heart. The core of the movie is the relationship between Mavis and her dad, Pops. While her siblings stepped in and out of the group, Pops and Mavis remained the constant — he with his guitar, and she with that deep, powerful voice.

And that’s the magic which helps Mavis! evade the trap of playing like an ego trip — Mavis is the first one to point to the people who have helped her over the years, and the focus on Mavis’ family enriches the experience. While there would be no Staple Singers without Mavis, the reverse is also true.

Ultimately, like the woman at its heart, Mavis! packs a lot into a small package. Check it out.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Loud Hailer (Jeff Beck, 2016)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

Jeff Beck is one of the great British rock guitarists of the Sixties, up there with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. And like those two, he was lead guitarist for British invasion band the Yardbirds.

I’ve recently become a fan of his 1975 album Blow by Blow, which is a terrific set of instrumentals. Going into Loud Hailer, I was expecting something built along similar lines.

Instead, this is more of a traditional rock album — albeit one that features one of the best guitarists of his generation strutting his stuff.

Kicking off with ‘The Revolution Will Be Televised’, Loud Hailer is not trying to echo Beck’s past work.

Extremely contemporary in its production, Beck and co-producer Filippo Cimatti employ a variety of weird electronic soundscapes, dubstep and sampling as backdrops to Beck’s guitar. 

Rosie Bones provides the vocals here, and is an effective counterweight to Beck’s heavy stomp.

On tracks like ‘Live in the Dark’ and ‘The Ballad Of The Jersey Wives’, her rasp is especially memorable, her lyrics oscillating between humorous skewering of the the vacuousness of reality television and more pointed political criticism (‘Thug Life’, ’O.I.L.’).

As with Iggy Pop’s recent Post Pop Depression, the presence of younger collaborators seems to have invigorated the veteran rocker.

With Carmen Vandenberg on second electric guitar, this trio are a powerful combination which takes the classic sound Beck helped pioneer in the sixties and pushes it into the future. Despite the modern trappings, Loud Hailer feels more like a natural progression of Beck’s generation than most of the acts seeking to evoke it.

On certain tracks (‘Pull It’ is an obvious example), Beck pushes the ’nu’ button a bit too hard, winding up with tracks which are almost parodic in their fidelity to current tastes. However, these are minor nitpicks. 

Loud Hailer is a solid, energetic outing from Jeff Beck that makes one wish he recorded more often.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Blues & Lonesome (The Rolling Stones, 2016)

[This review was originally published in 2017]

Over a decade after their last album A Bigger Bang, the Rolling Stones return with Blues and Lonesome, a rip-roaring trip into the past. 

Perhaps taking a cue from Keith Richard’s new solo project Cross-Eyed Heart, this a lean, mean record that gets in, does the job and gets out. In fact, the album it most resembles is Talk Is Cheap, if Keef had brought the rest of the band along. 

It helps that the material is so strong. A collection of old blues covers, this album brings the Stones back to their roots, and it’s the most fresh and alive they’ve sounded in years.

The album opens with the stomp of ‘Just Your Fool’. The scuzzy garage rock-style production is rough but clean, adding that extra dollop of grit to proceedings. The gritty high-energy continues the entire set: the tight strut of ‘Commit A Crime’, the slow-burn lament of the title track, the storming ‘Ride 'Em On Down’ and almost jaunty ‘Hate To See You Go’ show there is plenty of gas in the tank for the veteran rockers.

More than just a covers album, Blues & Lonesome shows the Rolling Stones can still kick out the jams when they want to. Hopefully they don’t take another decade to put out their next album. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BOOTLEG REVIEW: Filmed in Supermarionation (Stephen La Rivière, 2014)

[This review was originally published in 2016]

Telling the story of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the movers and shakers behind some of the most beloved and timeless children's television of the 20th Century, Filmed in Supermarionation combines talking heads, behind the scenes footage and specially shot interludes with Thunderbirds cast mates Lady Penelope, Parker and Brains breaking down exactly how to make a model space craft fly, how to shoot underwater, and how to stage convincing explosions in miniature.

It’s all engrossing stuff, shot and cut with pace and style. As someone who was only vaguely aware of the Andersons and their work, this documentary was a real eye opener, and should prove a lovely little treasure trove to viewers who grew up on the adventures of Mike Mercury, the Tracy brothers and Captain Scarlett.

While the Thunderbirds-related material is the centrepiece, it is the innovations and developments of the Anderson's earlier works which is the most fascinating. What makes it all the more interesting is that the filmmakers brought back all the old designers and effects meant to re-create their work in order to show the viewer exactly how these shows were made. 

Overall, Filmed in Supermarionation is a terrific record of a style and craft of filmmaking that we will probably never see again. Highly recommended.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.